Friday, May 13, 2016

Time's up

UPDATED: unknown to me as I was typing this overseas, Maduro was in cadena announcing a new emergency decree rendering moot the National Assembly and annuling Recall Election efforts for all practical purposes. In short confirming all that I wrote below.
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I have the feeling that the fall of Dilma in Brazil is going to speed up the conclusion of the Venezuelan farce. For the Narko-Cubano-Colonial regime action is required before the Temer presidency gets a chance to settle in. Not that the odds are with Temer, but Raúl and Maduro simply cannot take the chance.

I do not agree on the way that Dilma was pushed out. The nominal excuse was silly. But that she richly deserved what was coming her way, she did. What sealed her fate was naming Lula minister to protect him from prosecution. Such a breach of ethics makes any sitting president unfit for office. They, Brazilian congress, simply decided to act on what was in the mill and the lack, so far, of popular support for her and Lula show that "o povo" has a hard time to rally, or at least is not convinced that keeping Dilma in office is going to improve its lot.

Temer and his new cabinet are far from inspiring confidence. But if you have bothered reading the hisstory of Brazil you will know that they are used to such shifts and that they will likely give him a few weeks, maybe months. After all there is the technicality that Dilma may win her trial and be reinstated within 6 months though the impeachment tally makes that highly doubtful.

This being said the Castros and Maduro/narco-military have lost their main support. The head of Odebretch is in jail, provisional president Temer may chose, or not, to ventilate corruption cases to silence Lula and Dilma as needed since he is the one with the key to the files now. Even a return of Dilma cannot guarantee the strong support of yore.

What would Brazil do if there were a massive constitutional and human right violation in Venezuela? If Brazil goes against Venezuela it is likely that Uruguay will follow and Mercosur will be unanimous in its condemnation. Once Peru election is held in June even Unasur would go against Venezuela (and the recent hurried support to Dilma by Unasur secretary, the highly discredited puppet Samper, betray that worry).

Thus the time for Castro to give the order to Maduro, and/or the narco-military to take the initiative to dissolve the national assembly once and for all is now. It is still possible that the OAS could fail to get enough votes to apply the democratic charter to Venezuela after Maduro acts. But once Temer decides to act against Venezuela, with the support of Macri in Argentina, the US and Canada, Mexico would follow. Small countries then will chose the big countries against a flat broke violent Venezuela and game over: Venezuela would be a pariah state and go the way of Cuba out of regional organizations.

But with the narco-military still in charge. Or that is the plan anyway.

And thus it is the time to act for them, the thugs, now, before Temer even has a chance to look at Venezuela. All that has been going on since last Monday points that way.

Maduros declaration of a state of exception and the Supreme Court's rewriting of the constitution at will mean he's openly turning the regime into a dictatorship. The Venezuelan people can't expect outside help, in a world where the EU, Obama and the Pope suck up to Raúl Castro. Therefore, it's pretty much up to them.

The eventual decision will be made by a few senior military, and possibly the Cubans. And the only thing that's going to sway them is a national strike that impacts oil production and refining.

I'm not going to start laying out how to organize a national strike in times like this, but I'm pretty sure it won't work unless enough oil workers are joined by a large portion of the population simply locking themselves in their homes or striving to oppose the regime using peaceful but very proactive methods.

I'm not questioning or doubting your proposal. I just am curious to know why you think this would work. I thought that regimes like this want people to sit at home peacefully and quietly while they go to bed hungry and their money is worthless. And even if large numbers of PDVSA employees stopped working, couldn't the government just do like Chavez did the last time this happened, and bring in foreign workers and shipping firms to continue moving the oil out?

Maduro is heir of dead Hugo, Maduro should be removed from office put on trial for corruption, haul also all Maduro's loyalists to trial they all should in jail for life for all the damages done in Venezuela!

A Brazilian senator let the cat out of the bag in an interview a few days ago. Dilma's shenanigans with the budget was an excuse although sufficient ground for impeachment. The reason behind he said was that they do not want a Bolivarian government in Brazil. If this is good enough for them, it is also good enough for me. Good riddance Dilma!

I agree that the Brazilian Congress used pretty weak excuse to oust Roussef. I'd also hate to see start a precedent to oust a President every time there is a recession, because it assumes Presidents have much more control over national economies than they really do. Having said that, there was nothing illegal about the Brazilian Congress's actions and Ernesto Samper is an ignoramous for claiming otherwise.

I do not think it is as much the Brazilian issue as what is going on in Venezuela it self. The ignorant people that dont get the level of corruption that has gone on on the Chavez and Maduro era never will whether docume ts co.e out of Brazil or not. Most all governments in S America and Carribean took bribes to support Venezuelas crimes.I believe Maduro is dangerously close to losing control of Venezuela including the army and is taking extreme action to hold control over the rest of the regime. Ridding himself of the National Assembly will allow him to arrest them at will and silence them. It is in his mind a show of strength to say to the rest of the regime I am in control.

Why is there always this paranoid crap that the US is about to invade? Obama is too busy killing Syrians anyway. Since Maduro has no embargo to blame for his failures like Castro does, he uses anti-US hysteria to keep people on his side as the country descends into chaos. Meanwhile, the American capitalist monsters buy millions of dollars worth of PDVSA oil and pay in dollars while China tightens the oil noose with lucrative loans. If another idiotic communist massacre (the chavistas are communists, not socialists) starts to take place in Venezuela, the whole world should invade. Marxism is outdated, failed fantasy that kills and it is time to move on to something that works.

Good to hear you are back....was getting worried since one never knows.... Completely agree with destitution of Dilma - the amount of corruption swirling around the executive and her party (even if others are implicated) is massive. Maduro is facing a similar plight in that his bank account is probably empty but the vastness of the criminality around him coupled with ineptness means he can't be effective to take Venezuela anywhere good. I don't agree that Temer has the keys, as the source of most of the anticorruption actions have been the courts, including fiscales. I think that for the sake of continuity, they won't go after Temer or his cabinet for now.

I don't really know what the value of the Democratic Charter is in the OAS in terms of moving a country in a particular direction.... Venezuela has been thumbing its nose at its authority forever. What is getting kicked out of the organization going to do? I think a better barometer for survival is the complete evaporation of credit to do anything in Venezuela. Whenever that default of PDVSA or Govt takes place, that will be the end. Apparently Henry Falcon is doing international parallel diplomacy to try to organize 50 billion in loans if there is a Unity Govt in place. But if there is anything that we know from chavistas is that they are terrible at admitting they are wrong and accepting the rules of any system that they don't dominate.

The saddest part of this is if Chavez was not dead and came back today and they held an election he would win easily in Venezuela. The people starving to dead all have shrines of him in their house and still see him as a savior. Ignorance and stupidity run a muck in Venezuela as well as the rest of the world.

You people who compare USA anything to Venezuela are as ignorant as those who support the gov't in Venezuela. Try reading once in a while as people like Glover and Penn where just actors in a very large Venezuelan paid campaign for Venezuela's gas company in USA.

... Say Maduro plays his " Cuba " card , and sends in the goons .. how does he think the goons are going to operate the businesses ["private" and state - owned] in order for people to be able to survive ..

.. economically , the economy is going to end up in hyperinflation , if it is not there now . The official exchange rate is an obscene joke , and the currency will eventually become worthless . How does any nation operate in such an environment ..

.. the U.S. is not totally hopeless . Miz Hillary may only be a slight favorite , and the Donald just may surprise a great many folks ...

.. the real economic crime is the lack of development of the "Orinoco" [I think] region of shale oil in Vz . It makes Vz ' s current reserves of oil look tiny by comparison , and the failure of Vz ' s government to develop this area is a crime of the highest order ...

As awful as Hillary is and she is awful I the only real surprise anyone will have if Trump wins is how self serving he is and how he fooled people like you. Unfortunately for the USA they have no good candidates to elect at this point.

Venezuela Declares State of Emergency 5/16/2016CARACAS – The Venezuelan government on Monday proclaimed a 60-day nationwide “State of Exception and Economic Emergency,” responding to ever more acute shortages of basic goods and an opposition bid to recall President Nicolas Maduro.

The leftist president announced last Friday that he had decided to proclaim a state of exception to give himself “sufficient power” to address threats such as an ostensible coup plot involving former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a bitter foe of Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

Under the emergency declaration, officials can use police and the military to ensure “the correct distribution” of necessities.

The government is also authorized to spend money and enter into contracts without approval from congress, now controlled by the opposition.

Authorities likewise enjoy broad discretion to implement measures aimed at ensuring “the maintenance of public order in the face of destabilizing actions that seek to intrude on the internal life of the country or in its international relations,” in the words of the official proclamation.

The decree instructs the foreign ministry to scrutinize agreements made by Venezuelan individuals and organizations with foreign entities and to suspend those deemed to have political or “destabilizing” goals.

The emergency decree is legally subject to the approval of the National Assembly and the Supreme Court.

It's useful to undesrtand the context and why, from all the possible crimes of Dilma, the impeachmnent process came down to only her 2015 illegal loans + 6 fraudulent decrees.

By September 2005, Eduardo Cunha, lower house's president, had received at least 37 impeachment requests from civil society organizations, protest movements, individual lawyers, parties, etc. Street protests against the government still going strong as the lava-jato investigation was jailing people related to PT and Dilma's government almost every week and getting closer and closer to Dilma and Lula. At the same time Federal Court of Accounts ruled unanimously against the 2014 budget and accused Dilma of fiscal fraud. Cunha was personally under big pressure from civil society and his peers to accept the proceeding.(it was noticed at the time that the government and Cunha tried and failed to bargain a deal to archive all impeachment requests in exchange for the government vote in the ethical comission to save Cunha's mandate - but it's hard to know the truth on this)

At the time of the decision (last December) he picked the better and more prominent request - the one written by criminal and constitutional lawyers Janaína Paschoal, Miguel Reale and Hélio Bicudo (PT's founder). It's a brilliant, long and meticulous piece pointing 3 axis of crimes - 1) the Petrobras corruption hitting directly Dilma's presidential campaign in 2014 and her criminal omission; 2) the budgetary frauds to hide the 2014 deficits (and beyond through 2015) and 3) the corruption invlved in shady and secret loans through BNDES to the Petrolão construction companies to build in foreign countries (usually left-wing autocracies ruled by PT allies like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicarágua and Angola). There's a long list of common crimes and responsibility crimes in every axis alone - but together they form a criminal unity and at the top of the piramid there is the presidential office.

But Cunha didn't accept the denunciation as a whole. The piece was stripped down to only the point 2. His allies says he did it so as to avoid giving endless gaps for government lawyers to exploit and make a "judicialization" to the Supreme Court at every opportunity and cause at least big delays in the process. Janaína Paschoal was not impressed and accused Cunha of taking out crimes so as to hide his own involvement in the Petrolão scheme.

Though Cunha's "paranoia" was proved right somehow. His first ordeal of proceedings was harshly revised by the Supreme Court (in which 8 out of 11 judges are Lula and Dilma appointees), that reinterpreted the impeachment law (from 1952) on the rush, made the proceedings a lot harder to approve (the new comission + extra Senate acceptance vote + 2/3 vote in both houses rule is the harsher of any modern democracy) and caused a 3 months delay on the process.

The piece was then stripped further by the lower house comission to focus only on 2015 moves cause there was a sudden suspicion that the Supreme Court could rule out the judgement of actions from a previous mandate.

And while the denunciation was getting stripped, Dilma's crimes kept mounting. Dilma's appointment of Lula was in itself a crime of obstruction of justice (and the interception of her communication with him by the lava-jato investigators made a devasting public proof). She also is accused of appointing a judge to the STJ designed to free lava-jato prisioners.

So here is the situation with the impeachment. Yes, the circunstances made a devasting case against Dilma change focus to vary specific crime. But her budget manoeuvres are still criminal enough for impeachment and they mean a lot: 1) The left wing populism in South America is based on profligate spending of the public budget. Most of the time to "buy" support and votes and this results in all sort of economic chaos, debt, missmanagement, unpredictability, etc;2) Dilma did hide a crisis to be elected in 2014 through illegal loans. We were in a recession but the numbers didn't show it. She did run a campaign based on otimism and continuity. Investors felt betrayed and confidence in he economy gone into the ground. It made the crisis a lot deeper very fast. The practice continued after the election.3) Brazil has a Law of Fiscal Responsibility since 1997 to avoid this exactly scenario. But PT was always against it. So they slowly but surely circunvented it. The impeachment will stop this trend and force a much needed culture of fiscal responsabilty again in Brazil.

Also, as the excellent relatory in th Senate comission by Antonio Anastasia pointed, impeachment is both a criminal and political judgement. The parliament need an instrument to act politically against the executive for the sake of power balance. The alternative is absolute power of the executive. The deputies and senators can't never work in a bubble, they have to consider to whole picture when they vote. That's what they're doing.

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